De La Cretaz: Where are all the women in play-by-play broadcasting?

From Britni de la Cretaz at The Ringer on October 11, 2018, with mention of SABR member Suzyn Waldman:

This April, Jenny Cavnar got the chance of a lifetime. Cavnar already worked for AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain, the TV home of the Colorado Rockies, as an analyst in pre- and postgame coverage, but one Sunday she was informed that she’d get to do play-by-play for a Rockies broadcast for the first time. She was elated. This was a huge deal for her career, and a role women are almost never given—the gig would make Cavnar the first woman in 25 years to call play-by-play for a Major League Baseball game. But she was also nervous. The game against the San Diego Padres was the next day.

She scrambled to come up with a signature home run call, eventually deciding to play on the fountains at Coors Field. The night before her debut, her husband played an MLB: The Show video game between the Rockies and the Padres and she practiced her call whenever an animated Rockie hit the ball out of the park.

She didn’t have to wait long to try it out; the next night, in the bottom of the first inning, Nolan Arenado got ahold of a Bryan Mitchell pitch.

“In my mind I’m going, ‘Oh my gosh, you just have to go for it,’” she told me. The ball sailed over the left-field wall, and she went for it.

“Fire up the fountains!” Cavnar exclaimed. “She’s gone!”

Read the full article here: https://www.theringer.com/2018/10/11/17963320/women-play-by-play-broadcasting-andrea-kremer-hannah-storm-amazon-nfl



Originally published: October 11, 2018. Last Updated: October 11, 2018.